to you.”
As Rutley deliberately placed a monocle to his eye, he said, “A corner with such an entrancing vista,” carelessly waving his hand toward the open, “is a pardonable lure to dreamy forgetfulness.”
Then he stared at the girl and, as he supposed, conveyed the desired impression, muttered: “Charming!” and that word, uttered with quiet and apparently involuntary emphasis, at once made Hazel Brooke his friend, and, to add to the favorable impression which Rutley perceived he had created, he bowed low and said suavely: “Miss Brooke will permit me to say, I rejoice in her acquaintance.”
“Your Lordship may find me a deceiver.”
“I shall not believe so winsome a flower can be unreal.” And he again fixed the monocle to his eye and stared at her in pleased assurance.
“Art simulates many charming things of nature,” remarked Mrs. Thorpe, and she slyly glanced at Hazel.
The girl almost laughed; but her gentle breeding came to the rescue, and she bore Rutley’s stare with admirable nonchalance, until Mr. Corway, feeling a little amused at Lord Beauchamp’s monopoly of the girl’s attention answered Mrs. Thorpe: “Yet nature cannot be excelled in anything that is beautiful in art.”
For which he received from the girl a smile that thrilled him with a conviction that no lord, no croesus, nor commoner, could dethrone him from her heart.
The ordeal in which Hazel found herself under Rutley’s disconcerting stare, was terminated by Mrs. Thorpe.
“Your Lordship must be familiar with many beautiful things of nature. By the way, I want you to visit our conservatory. We have some choice exotics there from the Orinoco.”
Rutley removed his monocle, and turned to Mrs. Thorpe. “My secretary obtained some rare specimens in Bogota, nevertheless I shall consider it a pleasure to visit your collection, for indeed it must be superb, judging from such natural beauty already in evidence.”
“You are coming, too,” said Mrs. Thorpe, turning to Hazel and Mr. Corway.
“Thanks! – that is, – we shall join you presently,” stammered Mr. Corway, looking at Hazel with a half smile.
Mrs. Thorpe looked amused as she said: “Oh, very well,” and then, halting on the threshold, turned again and added: “Hazel, dear, don’t forget the conservatory.”
Rutley and Mrs. Thorpe had scarcely gone when Hazel exclaimed: “Well! I’m waiting for you.”
“Of course,” Corway replied haltingly; then, after a pause, “Hazel!”
“Miss Brooke – please,” she corrected, with a tantalizing smile.
“Oh – confound it. Hazel” – he began again.
“Are you coming?” she interrupted, moving away, but with an aggravating smile playing fitfully about her face.
Whereupon he bowed low, with mock formality, approached her offering his arm. “I crave the honor.”
The girl placed her hand in his arm with a promptness that flushed his face, but immediately blanched it with the teasing remark: “It’s to be only as far as the conservatory, you know.”
“And from there around the grounds,” he replied tenderly.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “You insist on going the rounds with me? Oh, very well!” and they laughed together.
Shortly after they had gone, the portieres of an entrance to the left were cautiously parted and a young girl peeped in, then entered the room. She was the embodiment of youth, happiness and expectancy.
She was dressed in the whitest of white muslin. A narrow band of magenta-colored silk encircled her slender waist, the long, loose ends of the bow flowing almost to her feet, while her mass of raven black hair drawn back from her fair white forehead, and coiled at the back of her shapely head lent a queenly grace to a divinely moulded form.
The suppleness of her carriage, intensified by the simplicity of her soft, faultless dress, was a poem of delight which needed no skill of adornment to beautify; no touch of art to dignify.
Across the room she stole, as lightly as though her feet were winged, and listened at the door.
“I am sure I heard his voice!” Then with a smile of joy, she tripped to the open window overlooking the piazza, and looked out, murmuring – “how I long to see him. My Joe! Handsome, manly Joe, I adore you. And these, his flowers – his favorite flower, our beautiful rose,” drawing from her hair two red roses, which she kissed again and again.
“I hurried home because I could not remain away from you, and now – oh, the joy of a glad surprise – I hear footsteps!” and she listened expectantly, then turned to behold Mrs. Harris, an elderly lady of portly bearing and elegantly dressed, who was at that moment entering from the piazza.
“Why, Virginia, I am delighted. You look the happiest girl in the land,” taking her hand and kissing her. “Oregon peach-bloom on your cheeks, too; I’ll wager you are just in from the farm, you hayseed.”
“Yes, and I’ve had the most delightful time,” replied the girl softly. “Romped over the fields of sweet-smelling clover, and through the orchards, and helped in the hay-field, too,” she laughed joyously.
“Hands up! I mean the palms,” said Mrs. Harris, in mock severity. “It must have been a silver rake you handled in the hay-field,” she resumed, after scrutinizing the palms of Virginia’s outstretched hands, “for there isn’t even a callous.”
“It is harvest time,” replied the girl, laughing, “and the harvest moon is death to callouses, you know.”
“We’ve missed you, dear, at Seaside,” said Mrs. Harris. “But still you look just as charming as though you had been there the entire season.”
“You rude flatterer. The seaside is nice, but I love our dear old farm home in the valley, best. Yet” – Virginia continued, demurely, with downcast eyes, “it seemed a little dull this year, and, you see, I have a reason for coming in before the harvest is over.”
As the girl stood with downcast eyes, her countenance appeared exquisitely regular, dignified and very beautiful.
“Ah, dear!” exclaimed Mrs. Harris, with admiration. “An affair of the heart – a man in it, eh, dear? – I know him. He will be here in a few moments – lucky fellow!”
“Will he? – are you sure?”
“Dear me! How joyful you are!” said Mrs. Harris, staring kindly at her.
“Oh, if you had been away from your sweetheart for so long a time as I have been from mine” —
“Ha! ha! ha! ha!” laughed Mrs. Harris. “Why, Virginia dear, only two weeks! Really you carry me back to my own girlish days, just after I met James – I remember well – my heart nearly fluttered out of its place.”
“My heart fluttered out of its place weeks and weeks ago, and will not flutter back, unless” —
“Unless what, dear?”
“Unless he despises it,” she said, with a sigh.
“Well,
